


Beyond the Breaking Point

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26598004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: David wakes up to a tap at the window. ToJackat the window.This is going to be a long night.
Relationships: David Jacobs & Jack Kelly, David Jacobs/Jack Kelly
Comments: 26
Kudos: 115





	Beyond the Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this as an exercise in not just skimming my way through scenes - this is about 2.5k words, and it's all one scene. You can take one guess what scene it is, I'm sure you'll be right. (For anyone counting, this is the eighth time I've done this. _Eighth.)_  
>  Enjoy :)

David cries himself to sleep after the rally, stressed to breaking point. He hasn’t cried this hard for this long in _years_ , and by the time he actually falls asleep his head is pounding and his throat is raw.

He wakes to a tap at the window.

It requires every ounce of David’s not inconsiderable self-restraint not to actually scream out loud when he realizes who’s doing the tapping. Every single fucking ounce.

It’s Jack – of fucking course it’s Jack – and he looks rather the worse for wear, which David can’t begin to feel sorry for. Jack looks tired, with dark circles under his hazel eyes only accentuated by the growing bruise on his cheek from Spot’s fist earlier this evening.

David slips out of bed, jams his feet into his boots, and moves to the window. He opens it as quietly as he can, fixing his visitor with a sharp glare to keep him silent until the window shuts behind him.

He shoves Jack hard by the shoulders. “What the _fuck_ are you doing, showing your face here?”

Jack lets him, stumbling back against the railing of the fire escape. “Davey, we gotta talk.”

“No, we don’t _gotta talk_ ,” David hisses. “I don’t think I ever want to hear another word out of your fucking mouth again in my entire life.”

“ _Davey_ ,” Jack says, and it comes out somewhere significantly closer to a whine than David has ever heard from Jack Kelly. “Please, you gotta listen to me.”

“Why?” says David. He’s suddenly glad he’d thrown himself into bed half-dressed, because it allows him to indulge the urge that comes over him to shove his hands into his trouser pockets. It’s a desire that comes from a mix of wanting to curl in on himself as tightly as possible and needing to not throw a punch at Jack while also keep as cool an appearance as possible.

“Because I fucked up and I can’t make it right without your help,” Jack says, his voice low and ragged. “Okay?”

David hums, not quite trusting himself to respond. _I fucked up_ feels like an understatement to an almost unstatable degree.

Jack seems to take David’s non-answer as the go ahead to carry on talking, because he sighs with something that looks almost like relief. “I’m sorry, Davey. I’m more sorry than I got words for.” He fusses with a loose thread in the buttonhole of his vest. “But I didn’t – I only did it ‘cause I had to.”

“Oh, you _had_ to?” David echoes scathingly.

“Davey,” Jack says, weak and broken. “Pulitzer – no, I gotta start from the beginning. Remember how I was gonna go tell Joe about the rally?”

“How could I forget?” says David, levelling Jack with a stony glare. “You disappeared and never came back. _Until_ you showed up to shove a knife in my back, of course.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says again. “I know. I got to Joe’s office and – and Snyder was there, and Kathy was there and – and Katherine’s Pulitzer’s daughter, didja know that?”

“She is?” says David. For the first time, some of his tension gives way to pure shock. It all draws back up as soon as Jack speaks again, though.

“Yeah,” says Jack. “I thought she’d – ugh, it’s complicated, it’s fucked up, but he made me think she’d betrayed us, okay? She didn’t, but I thought she’d sold us out. Sold me’n you out, specifically. ‘Cause Joe, he – fuck, okay, Davey. Davey, he knows your name.”

“What do you mean, Jack?” David asks, frustrated. He’s having trouble following Jack’s train of thought. He’s rambling, cutting in and over himself like he can’t decide what he needs to say first. David has never seen Jack like this before. “I don’t understand.”

“Snyder was there, and Joe threatens me with the Refuge, right?” Jack says, taking his hat off with one hand and running the other through his hair. “And that’s – I mean. I’d rather not, but I’m – only then, he fucking – he threatens Crutchie. And he –“ Jack breaks off, meeting David’s eye.

“He what, Jack?” David prompts, much gentler this time, somewhat despite himself. He doesn’t _want_ to be gentle with Jack, Jack doesn’t fucking deserve David’s gentleness, but he can’t help it. It comes out soft and concerned, because there’s this look of broken fear in Jack’s eye and David can’t bring himself to make it worse.

“He threatened _you_ ,” Jack says softly. “He looked me in the eye and he used your fucking name – the name I fucking _gave you_ , Davey. He called you _Davey._ I dunno how they know it, I dunno if Katherine used it or what but I – it scared the shit outta me. Me in danger’s one thing, y’know? I can get myself outta shit. But Crutchie? Les? _You_?” Jack shakes his head violently. “I couldn’t fuckin’ live with myself if you got – _Davey_.”

“Jack,” David says. He takes his hand out of his pocket, meaning to – he isn’t sure what he means to do with it, actually. He runs it through his own hair, instead, then shoves it back into his pocket where it belongs. “Jackie, I’m not sure you’ve even finished one complete sentence –“

(The nickname slips out without even thinking; his anger and frustration is falling away, replaced by bone-tired sadness. And Sad David is more emotionally attached to Jack than Angry David would like to admit.)

“Joe Pulitzer knows who you are, Davey,” Jack interrupts. He blurts the words out in one breath, like if he stops he’ll lose the thread again. “He knows who you are and he used you against me. And it worked; I gave in because I didn’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Getting hurt is a risk I took on the instant I climbed up next to you on that cart, Jack,” David points out. He’s tired, he’s so goddamn tired. He doesn’t have the energy to deal with Jack’s half-excuses and rambling sentences – he’s gonna have to pick up the pieces of their union and their relationships with the other boroughs tomorrow morning, and he’d very much like to get a little rest before he does. "I knew what I was doing."

“I know,” says Jack. “I know. But I had this chance to keep you safe and I fucking took it, okay?”

“You had to know we would carry on without you, Jack,” David says. He leans back against the cold metal of the fire escape railing. It’s pressing against a bruise on his right side, and it hurts but David can’t bring himself to care. Jack being here hurts more. “You had to know.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Jack with a small chuckle. “You’re stubborn as fuck.”

David sighs. “Why’d you come back, Jack? Why not just cut and run?”

“I was planning to,” Jack admits. He drops onto the stairs like a marionette whose strings have been cut. “Kath hunted me down.”

“And what did Katherine say?” David asks, when Jack doesn’t continue right away.

“She came up with a way to save the cause,” Jack replies. He’s speaking to his own knees, rather than looking up at David. “She screwed my head back on straight.”

David kicks Jack’s shin, in an effort to get the other boy to look up at him. It works, sort of. “What’s the plan?”

“Expanding the strike, to a citywide strike of child workers,” Jack says, staring at a spot close to David’s left ear. “She’s got an article she wrote that didn’t go to print, some drawin’s a’mine. If we can get it printed and distributed around, I think it could work.”

“Where the fuck are the two of you planning to print this – this newsie pape, huh?”

Jack laughs, but it comes out sort of broken. “Cellar’a the World’s got this old press. Nobody’d ever go lookin’ for us there, huh?”

“The cellar of the World?” David asks, raising an eyebrow. “That something Kitty just knew off the top of her head or –“

“It’s where I slept last night,” Jack says dully. “Accommodations courtesy of Joe himself, while I mulled over his _proposition_.” He spits the last word in a disgusted tone, and David can hardly blame him. It’s not exactly like it had been a square business deal – it seems like Jack’s choices had been between everybody getting hurt and betraying them in the name of keeping them safe. Some choice.

“Ah,” says David.

“Look, Davey,” Jack says, and now he really does meet David’s eye. “You pro’lly hate me now. And I don’t blame you. But I – if we don’t do this, we’re screwed. That’s it. You and the boys can strike till we all starve, but Joe ain’t givin’ in. He can wait you out. But if we can get _every workin’ kid in New York_? That’s how we turn the fuckin’ tide.”

David sighs. Jack is probably right, which is really fucking annoying.

“You might be right,” David says out loud. “Which is really, really fucking annoying.”

Jack laughs weakly. “Yeah, no kidding.”

They stare at each other in silence for a moment. It’s tense, but less tense than when David first stepped outside. Jack is still smiling, sort of, at David, who’s looking back with a furrowed brow.

“Why come to me?” David asks suddenly. Jack’s face falls.

“Because I screwed you,” Jack says, no longer meeting David’s eye. He looks down at his hands instead. “You were my partner and I stabbed you in the back in fron’na everybody. You didn’t know I was trying to protect you by it, and neither did anybody else. I might’a ruined everything and you didn’t deserve that, no matter how bad I wanna keep you safe.”

“And how bad is that?” David asks. He doesn't really mean to - it just slips out.

Jack stands up. David hadn’t realized how close he’d moved to Jack until he’s standing and they’re just about nose-to-nose. Jack’s standing on the bottom step, so for once he’s actually a little bit taller than David, but their eyes are nearly on a level.

“Davey,” Jack says softly. Some of the ragged, broken quality to Jack’s voice has gone, leaving something almost tender in its wake. “I made a shit decision with shit choices but – but I’d do a lot worse to keep you safe, I think.”

“Oh,” says David. He isn’t sure exactly what to do with that. He’d known Jack cared for him – he’d _thought_ Jack cared for him, before tonight – but still, this is – this is something else. More, in a way David isn’t quite prepared to process right now. “I – oh.”

“Yeah,” says Jack. He picks his hand up, and for a moment David thinks he’s just going to run it through his hair again, but instead he just rests it on David’s shoulder, touching his skin at the neckline of his undershirt. He takes a shaky breath, squeezing David’s shoulder. “Yeah. But. Uh. Anyway. I came to apologize, ‘cause you didn’t deserve that. But I also came ‘cause I need your help.”

“My help?” David echoes. It’s all he can do, his brain suddenly a little fuzzy around the edges. From exhaustion, obviously.

Not from the sudden and intense proximity to one Jack Kelly. Not from the feeling of edging dangerously close to a kind of emotional honesty that he isn’t prepared to face.

“We need the boys,” Jack says. “To – to help us print and distribute the paper. Katherine and I can’t do that ourselves, you know?”

“And you need _me_ , because -?”

“Nobody in their right mind’s gonna trust me right now,” Jack says with another weak laugh. “’Specially not Race, and the others’ll follow his lead.” He pats David’s shoulder before dropping his hand to his side. “Or _yours_.”

“You think so?” says David.

“I know so,” says Jack. He says it like it’s obvious. “The boys trust you, as they damn well should. And _Race_ trusts you, which ain’t nothin’.”

David nods. “I know _that_.”

Race was the one who’d found David backstage after Jack ran off, who’d helped him bring a sliver of order back to the chaos, who’d sent him home with a pat on the shoulder and a sad nod. David isn’t sure exactly what it was he’d done that had cut through the younger boy’s notoriously thick walls, but he’s glad for it. If the only one who’d really trusted him had been Jack, he’d have been doubly screwed tonight.

“So,” says Jack, his eyes flicking over David’s face, “are you in?”

David sighs. There’s a part of him – the part that’s heartbroken and angry and betrayed, even despite Jack’s apology – that wants to say no. That wants to tell Jack to fuck off and solve his own damned problems.

And yet –

“Yes,” says David. He’s in too deep with this cause to take the risk that they’ll think of something else this good. He’s in too deep with Jack Kelly to take the risk that Jack won’t leave if he says no.

“Oh, thank God,” says Jack, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Davey, I could kiss you.”

It sounds a little too sincere to play off as just a hyperbolic joke.

“Well don’t,” says David. _Too close,_ he thinks, _too close. I can’t handle this right now._ “I’m still mad at you.”

Jack’s face twitches, like he’s almost going to smile but catches himself at the last second. “I pro’lly deserve that.”

“You damn well do,” says David. “Now wait here, because I need a fucking shirt.”

“Nobody’d complain if you went like that,” Jack says.

David glares at him.

Jack raises his hands in surrender. “I’ll wait.”

David moves away from him, opening the window and slipping back inside. He grabs his shirt off of the floor – the same blue and white plaid one he’s been wearing the last few days in a row, after the sleeve on his other day-to-day shirt got torn nearly completely off in the riot on the second day of the strike – and shrugs it on, making quick work of the buttons. He takes the brief moment it takes to put his shirt back on, his back turned to Jack, as a breather.

He squeezes his eyes shut tight. Tonight feels like too much from top to bottom, from the moment he walked into the theatre to the moment Medda told him he’d have to speak on his own, to the moment Jack shoved past him and tried to ruin _everything_ they’d worked for, to waking up to Jack Kelly outside his window begging forgiveness.

If he had a single tear left to cry, he probably would right now. He’s over-fucking-whelmed and he’s so fucking tired and Jack is here and Jack is _Jack_ and they’re this fucking close to stating outright the thing David’s almost sure they’re both feeling but they shouldn’t – can’t – talk about. But he wrung himself dry when he fell to pieces earlier, and there’s no time to fall apart again, anyway.

David opens his eyes, turning on his heel to face the window again. They’ve got work to do.


End file.
